I don't think things should be painted as black or white as being either right or wrong. A rewrite can be the best thing to happen to a code base, but it is no

I don't think things should be painted as black or white as being either right or wrong. A rewrite can be the best thing to happen to a code base, but it is not a panacea for all code quality problems. Sometimes a refactoring is simply a better option. There are various reasons that factor into this decision, a good one being, as you mentioned, the assumption that you're still working on the codebase in question.